 I'm going to be talking to you today about a very important topic, which is mental health, in particular, building back a better future of work with a new human 3.0. And it will all make sense once I start talking. But let me introduce myself a little bit. I am Peter Diaz, like Seema said, I am the CEO of the WMHI. I am a author of a co-author of the book Mental Wealth, an essential guide for workplace mental health and well-being that is being sold around the world in all major stores. And my life is pretty good now. I have a lovely family. I have a seven year old son, which I love very much and keeps me very interested. But it wasn't always like this. There was a time in my life when I really descended into a very, very dark hole. I had a very, very big black dog like Seema and I was talking about before. And it was so bad that one day out of desperation, I went to the doctor for the 20th time and the doctor looked at me and he said, you know what, you have a mental illness. And I thought, wow, what does that mean? What does that mean? And he said, well, that means you have a bipolar disorder. You know, sometimes you have extremes, mania, and sometimes you have extreme lows, extreme highs, extreme lows. And at the time I thought, well, that's good that I have a diagnosis. I felt a diagnosis. I felt a little bit relieved. But you know, that started me on a whole journey of dealing with this new diagnosis, of having medication, taking medication. I was descended in such a deep hell that I was completely dysfunctional. I needed support from the government. I was receiving a pension, a disability support pension, and that's how bad I got. And I thought that that was going to be me forever until a few years later, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. You know what I mean? I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. So I thought to myself, hang on, I have all these lovely people helping me and they care. But you know what? The reality is that at the end of the day they go home and they have a wonderful life and they don't think of me until the next time I see them. And I thought that that kind of made me angry and upset. The fact that they had a wonderful life and I didn't. So that day I made the decision, I'm going to change my life. There has to be a better way than this black dog, this bipolar depression that I'm enjoying or I am into it right now. So that I made the decision, I'm going to recover. But I didn't know how. So what I did is I had this brilliant idea. How about if I start researching? I had a lot of time, I wasn't working. So how about if I start researching and reading and see what I can learn? So I started a goal for myself because I was very, very bad at studying and finishing things at the time. And I said, how about if I read 100 books from the beginning to the end and see what happens? And I did that. I started reading, but of course I didn't want my reading to be boring. So I started looking at subjects that I found interesting. And in that search, in that reading, in that reading, I came into contact with people that had satisfying life, that have powerful lives. And I asked the question to myself, what is it that they do that I'm not doing? What is it that they do on an everyday basis that makes them successful, that makes them powerful, that makes them healthy? Because whatever I'm doing is not making me successful. It's not making me powerful. It's not making me happy. So what can I learn? And that's what I did. I started applying bits and pieces as I was learning it. And the more I applied, the better I felt. Eventually, another day, I went back to another doctor, a lovely doctor in Canberra, and Dr. Timothy. And I was sitting in front of him and he looked at me very intensely and said, you know what, Peter? And I said, what? I knew there was something coming. I didn't know what. You're not doing anything with your life right now. Well, that's true. So why don't you go and study something? And I thought, oh my God, study something. How am I going to start something? I'm going to finish it. I'm depressed most of the time. I'm on medication. That made me slow. But I didn't want to disappoint him. So I asked him, so what do you have in mind? He says, well, why don't you go to university? Wow, university. How can I go to university? How can I be in that space myself? I said, you know what? They're running orientation week. Go and have a look. Check them out. See what happens. And I did that. I went and I checked the university and the rest is history. I joined the social work department and I studied a full year professional degree in social work. Once I finished, I liked many new skills. And once I finished, I decided to get a job. But I decided to go to a new city, to move from the city that I was and to go to a new city where they didn't know me and they didn't know my history with bipolar. And I did that. I went to Sydney. I found a job. I found a job as a rehab coordinator at the time. And I thought, rehabilitation advisor, sorry, rehabilitation advisor for a team. And I thought, wow, I had, you know, I struck it lucky. You know, this is the best thing ever. And I was very happy about that. I thought I had achieved something. I didn't tell them, though, that I had a mental illness and that I was still recovering from it. I didn't tell them anything. I decided not to do that. A few reasons once is because of the stigma and discrimination. I didn't want them to discriminate against me. But also there was another reason I didn't want my mental health issues to become a crutch for myself. Does that make sense? You know, I didn't want to use my mental health problem as an excuse not to keep advancing. And the rest is history. I did well in the job. I managed to survive for a couple of years, then I moved to other jobs and eventually I went into mental health. I became an accredited mental health social worker. And of course, I didn't tell people that I had had a mental health issue, but they knew I had very deep insights into mental health. So I stand here before you. Not as a person with a mental health issue because I don't have one. I consider myself recovered. I'm a different kind of crazy now. I think we all need to be a little bit crazy in the sense of have fun and have humor in life. It's part of being happy. So yes, I don't consider myself a person with a mental health issue. And as you can see, I have a unique understanding of what it's like to be a person with a mental health issue and also to come out of it. I understand the journey of coming out of that hole and what is needed to come out for a person to come out of that hole. I also have an understanding of how organizations work and what they need to do in order to help people not to bring their black dog to work, not to feed their black dog too much, keep it little. You want a Chihuahua-sized black dog, not a doberman, yeah? A Chihuahua-sized black dog is okay because that means you're human. So how do we do that? So one of the things that I did a few years later is to write the book Mental Wealth with my co-author, Amy Golding, and she's a psychologist. She's my wife, and we worked on this book together. And we're very proud of it. It's helping a lot of people around the world. So one of the things I've learned in my journey, and this is very important, so pay attention to this. One of the things that people forget is that a powerful human being is a mentally healthy human being. No power, no mental health, period. Mental health is mental wealth. Mental wealth. I'll say that again. Mental health is mental wealth. There's power in mental wealth. When we talk about wealth, what do we talk about? We talk about resources, don't we? A wealthy person is wealthy because he or she is resourceful. It has access to options. So if we want to increase the mental health of people, we have to make sure that people tap into their inner resources, bring that out and they become resourceful. And that's why I think that our major clients, the people that we usually deal with on a daily basis that we consult for, that we run workshops for, are human resources departments. It's interesting, isn't it? Because that's where in the business of helping people become powerful by becoming resourceful. And that leads to health. It's not interesting. Sometimes people forget that a powerful human being is a healthy human being. So my story has given me a unique angle on world events too. I mean, I grew up in a very strong religion. I was a minister of religion at one point. I have traveled the world. I was born in Germany, from Spanish parents. I grew up in Germany, then I grew up in Spain, then I grew up in Australia. I've grown up all around the world. And what that has meant is that I have been exposed to so many cultures that I have a worldview of mental health. I have a worldview of people and their power and their resources and how they need to get it. I also, my personality is such that I consider myself a global empath, a global empath. I feel, and this is something that comes naturally to me. It's not something I have to work on. I feel the trends of the world. I feel the emotional side of the world. If the world is in pain, I carry that with me. I gotta tell you, the last two years have been extremely hard for me at that level, being a global empath. Because the world right now is in such heavy pain with our reaction to the pandemic. So we're definitely in a time right now where we need to reassess and ask the question, how do I become powerful so I can be mentally healthy? How do I become powerful so I can help other people become resourceful and probably my team? How can I help my workplace, my team members become resourceful, become powerful beings? So they can enjoy life and they can avoid many of the problems that mental illness brings with them. To build, you also need to create what I call the human 3.0. I'll talk to you about the human 3.0, but first I'm going to identify the human 2.0. Makes sense, right? So the human 2.0 used to be just before the year 2000. Remember what we were worried about in the year 2000? We were worried about the clocks in the computers not working, not changing. Remember that? Now we laugh, don't we? How could we have been so silly? Nothing happened, but millions, millions were spent just in that little silly problem. Nothing happened, thank God, but we were even scared that at that time even planes could be falling off the sky because of that little clock problem. Remember that? So that was one of the biggest worries that we used to have and we used to worry about the financial system stopping and maybe we were not going to have enough food, etc. But nothing happened, nothing happened. But that was the human 2.0. The human 2.0 at the time needed to learn emotional intelligence, needed to know how to behave and the stress. But now we carry forward to the human 3.0. The human 3.0 has got a different set of problems, hasn't it? The reaction to COVID has made the whole world stop. We've never seen anything like it. And we don't exactly know what the future will mean for the human 3.0. We have a lot of things that are concerning us. For example, am I an essential worker? Do I matter as a human being? Or am I expendable? Where is my income going to come from? Can I and should I work from home? How much is the way I live destroying the planet? Is it making it dirtier? Am I going to have a planet to live in? Are my children or my grandchildren going to have a planet to live in? Do I have a job? Am I a bad person if I don't vaccinate? Am I a bad person if I vaccinate? Am I a bad person if I don't wear a mask? Or if I worry? How long and how often do I live in lockdowns? And how many more lockdowns are we going to have? When will I be able to travel freely? Which ones are my human rights? Where are my freedoms? How will I and my family survive? And what will my job look like during and after the pandemic? Will I have a job? So we have a lot more worries than the human 2.0. Don't you agree? We have a few things happening. And that's just scratching the surface. So sometimes people ask me, but how do we make the workplace a happy place? Well, happiness is a byproduct of something else. And we need to understand that it is possible that happiness may not be relevant for very long. Is that possible? How could it be that one day, workplaces may not care about how happy the workers are? Well, we do know workplaces like that, don't we, around the world? We know workplaces where people are kept in very bad conditions. The employers don't seem to care whether they're happy or not. They're just productivity machines. We also have seen the workplace being assaulted by new technologies. Now we have seen the rise of AI. Elon Musk has been really worried about artificial intelligence and the impact on the human race. And he has basically given up. He's been trying to warn us for a couple of years. But AI, the robots, are very real and they're coming into the workplace. Right now we have trucks that can travel from one city to the other to deliver things without a single driver. That technology exists. We have cars that you can call them and then will come and pick you up in the Tesla cars. But I'm sure other car makers are also advancing. There are the new generation artificial intelligence can write essays and articles so good that sometimes you wouldn't be able to tell that a robot wrote that. So when you look at these advancements, even in the area of mental health, by the way, there are little robots that can give you counseling to a degree. And guess what? Some people say that they feel more comfortable with a robot than with a human being because they can tell them anything and they won't judge. At least that's what we think that robots don't judge. Maybe they do. We don't know that. But we have to see as human beings, you know, this is a competition. You know, some people like to look at the world in a very optimistic way. And I like that. I like to think that robots are going to be our friends. But I like one thing that I learned through my mental health issues is that being optimistic or pessimistic, it's irrelevant. What will help you, what will help you in your quest, what will help you as a human 3.0 is being realistic. Understanding where the threats are. We seem to be having a skills shortage. We're going to have a shortage of jobs eventually within the next 10 years. That means that there will be a competition for the good jobs or the jobs that are still needing human beings to do. We will be polarized into society. We have already seen the polarization of the society into those that are worthy and the unworthy. We call them essential and non-essential people. Have you heard that term? Essential workers, non-essential workers. From a psychological point of view, that's a terrible thing to call someone. Tell them that they're non-essential. That is a horrible thing. But if we take that into consideration, right now, there's a push by certain parts of the world, certain companies of the world to give more attention to the mental health of the people because they understand that mental health is mental wealth. But if we take this and we expand it all across the time into the next 10 years, we don't know what is going to happen. But it is quite possible that a lot of us won't have any jobs. I mean, the world has already started gearing for a universal income. We have to pay attention. Mental health doesn't happen by covering our eyes and ears and pretending things are not existing. But they are there. So what is it going to be like? Can you trust the care of your mental health to such a system? I say no. I say the mental health, your mental health, my mental health and the mental health of our people is too important to leave it up to someone else. We need to take leadership. We need to take responsibility. And we see certain things happening around the world. For example, mental health has become synonymous with feeling good all the time. No one should have a single negative bad feeling. That's not realistic. Because as human beings, we're yin and yang, we have to have good feelings, bad feelings. It's not where we have to have them. We have them that they belong to us. So we can't see mental health as the absence of negativity. Mental health has to be something more. And it's the introduction of power and powering individuals. And what's the number one direction in workplaces right now that workplaces are giving people? We see and we talk about it in our book. We see workplaces, the moment that someone comes to the workplace and says, look, I'm not feeling well. I think I might be depressed. They do one thing. They do one thing normally in workplaces. They say, go away. Not with these words and this tone, but that's what they tell people. Go away. Go away and talk to a professional. Go away and take some time off. That's the wrong direction. As managers, as human resources departments, we need to be prepared to have a conversation with people. For a person with a mental health issue to come and trust you with their problems. With their problems. Sorry. Thank you. I don't know what happened to the screen. So for a person to come and trust you with their mental health problems, it's very, very difficult for someone to come and talk to you. And if after they made such an effort, they can't really talk to you because you send them away to talk to a professional, or you send them away, or you send them away to take some time off. That might not be exactly what they need. You need to have the skills to be able to talk to them. You need to be able to have the skills to get the resources out of them. You need to know how to treat people. I'll take your little story. There was this woman that was at work and in passing mentioned to their manager that she had bipolar disorder and she was doing something at home. She didn't ask for help. She was just saying in passing bipolar disorder. The manager panicked. Behind her back, the manager went and talked to the other manager, her manager, and they decided together that that was too difficult for them to handle by themselves. And without this lady knowing, they went to the HR department. The HR department panicked. So from then on, every week, they had a little meeting with her panel of people and talking to her about her bipolar. And this lady was quite upset about this because there wasn't any need for this. And she says that weekly meeting made me more unwell than the bipolar disorder that I was having. So sometimes that's the overreaction. When people don't know what to do, they tend to overreact. So that's interesting, isn't it? How do we help people? We're having a situation in which we need to learn to survive and to thrive. The human 3.0 is a human that will survive and thrive amid these draconian circumstances that we're living in. The human 3.0 has to travel a different world completely. This reaction to COVID has made the world stop and take and reassess what they're going to do. What would the future mean for the human 3.0? How can we become this human 3.0? There is a powerful being that can weather a storm that has got a different kind of mindset, a power mindset. See, I'm not sure if you're noticing here. I could be talking to you in clinician terms, but I also happen to be a therapist. And having this experience has shown me that if we become resourceful, we feel better. If we become resourceful enough, we become happy. So what makes a human 3.0 a human bill to last? It's the mindset, developing the power mindset. The human 3.0 is a go-getter. It takes charge of his or her own life. It does what it needs to do. It's a discipline human being. It waits for no one. And this is something I like to encourage everybody listening in. Don't wait for someone else to take care of your mental health, to take care of your development. I see that often, very, very often in workplaces. I need this information. I need that information. I need this training, but work won't pay for it. And I always have the same answer. So what? Why don't you pay for it? You know why? Because no one should care about your life more than you do. Because at the end of the day, nobody does. You are your number one fan. So the human 3.0 lives in a hostile environment. The manager 3.0, even more so. She lives in the Me Too era, the canceled culture era, the easily offended era. The era where workers want to work less and be paid more. The era when speech is seen as violent. The era of chaos. An era when black is white and white is black and up is down and down is up. It is a difficult era. I mean, I don't really understand how many managers, how you guys do it. Because there's so many things to take into consideration. And then you have to take care of your team's mental health and your own mental health because you're also a human being. So how do you survive? How do you survive? Let alone survive is a full-time job. But how do you survive and thrive? Because you don't want to just be surviving. Life is to be lived, not to be survived. You survive and thrive. How do you do that? How do you become the human 3.0? There are certain things that you need to do. For example, you need to access your brain power. You need to develop a power mindset and become powerful. So one tip that I'm going to give you, how do you develop a brain power to access your resources? Watch how you talk to yourself. You're always talking to yourself. Always. I think we're all a little bit schizophrenic, to be honest. We're always talking. And you know what? 80% of the time, most people, it's an enemy in there, isn't it? You're not pretty enough. You're not good enough. You're not powerful enough. Look at you. You made another mistake. Blah, blah, blah, blah. That takes away your power. But if you become aware of that little voice, you can train that little voice. Because you remember, you want to make that black dog, the huge doberman. You want to make it a teacup chihuahua. Have you seen those teacups chihuahuas? They're cute. They put them in a teacup. That should be the size of your black dog. And you can do it by training your voice, your internal voice. You become aware of it. Teach it to say nice things. Some people say, ah, but I don't believe in positive thinking. Well, it doesn't really matter whether you believe in positive thinking or not. You know, most people, what they're doing is negative thinking. So if negative thinking works so well, as far as to depress you, positive thinking maybe works so well as to make you happier and more powerful. You don't need to believe in it. Just try it. Just do it. So in that way, you will become so powerful. You can weather any storm and you can help other people. You can help your team. You can teach your team too. Managers have got a number one job to do, managers, which is to watch every word that comes out of your mouth to make sure that it is an upbuilding word, not a destructive word. Makes sense? When you talk, people should be lifted instead of flat. That's how you create a powerful team. Your team, by the way, is always listening to you. They're always learning from you. So if you are getting results in your team that you don't like, just do a little visit as to how you have been talking to your team, how you have been visiting your team, what kind of example you are setting up for your team. It's not solely your responsibility. I agree with that. So if more people are involved. And then surround yourself of a team of powerful individuals. If you're a manager, make sure that your team is like a commander team. Have you seen commander teams in movies? They go in a helicopter, right? They've got all this weight on top of them, right? And the helicopter goes down and then decides to go, go, go, go. And they get out of the helicopter. They don't even think, do they? They know exactly what they need to do. They need to go. They need to hide. They need to, whatever. I'm not a commander, so I don't know what they do exactly. But I've seen it. It's impressive. Why is it impressive? Because it's a team full of matcher hombres, isn't it? You know, people that can stand anything. They know what to do. They're working as a team. They're working. They're communicating the way that I don't even understand. But they know what's going on, even in silence. So that's the kind of team that as a manager you should be looking for. Can I trust every single member of my team that they will deliver on time when I need them? Are they strong? Are they resilient? Are they powerful? Because that's what mental health is. Powerful individuals with powerful actions. So a powerful, how do we get powerful individuals? I'll give you another tip. The first thing that you need to have for your team and for yourself. By the way, you can apply this to your family too. You can apply this anyway. It's a powerful mission. A person cannot be powerful without a mission. Because power comes from movement. Emotion, it's motion. So we need to have motion in order to become powerful. So a powerful mission equals a powerful action which equals a powerful person. Determined to be powerful because that equals mental health that leads to mental health. So pay attention to your mental health. Your team's mental health. Help your people to become powerful. Watch your thoughts. Watch your speech. And by the way, get them the training that is needed. Get your people the training. Get yourself the training. Get good books to read. Get good workshops to listen to. Do what you're doing now. You're coming and listening to different people's opinions on the matter so you can learn and apply that later. Because at the end of the day, remember this. Mental health is mental wealth. And mental wealth is resourcefulness and power. So wish you good luck in your journeys. Hi, I'm Emmy Golding, Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. We hope you liked the video. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. We have more and more videos being released each week. So when you subscribe you'll get a notification letting you know when a new one's just been published. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and don't miss out on this vital information for yourself, your colleagues and your loved ones.